Embodiments of the inventive subject matter generally relate to the field of email communication systems, and, more particularly, to a mechanism for email thread monitoring and automatic forwarding of related email messages.
Electronic mail (or email) systems provide a means for individuals to communicate quickly and efficiently regardless of geographic location. Client email applications allow a user to send an email message to one or more primary email recipients, and provide a carbon copy (“Cc”) of the email message to one or more secondary email recipients. Furthermore, client email applications allow the user to send a blind carbon copy (“Bcc”) to one or more additional secondary email recipients. Typically, the primary and second email recipients can see all the email addresses of the other primary and secondary email recipients, with the exception of the email addresses that were sent a blind carbon copy. Each of the primary and secondary email recipients can reply to all the other email recipients (with the exception of the blind carbon copy email addresses that remain hidden), reply to a subset of the email recipients, and/or forward the email message to additional individuals. Typically, when an email message is replied to or forwarded by one or more of the email recipients, an email thread is created by the client email application adding or appending the original email message at the bottom of the new email message when creating the new email message. The email thread continues to grow as more email recipients reply to or forward the email thread, and therefore more email messages are appended to the email thread.